


Wish Came True

by TwentyoneTwelve



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Round 1, What-If, extra scene, jedifest 0018, roguerobin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 16:20:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10222370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwentyoneTwelve/pseuds/TwentyoneTwelve
Summary: Here's the Truth. Don't wish where the Force is concerned, you might get what you ask for. In which Callista begins to realise what she's done for when she wakes up in a escape pod after the destruction of the Eye of Palpatine





	

She hadn’t thought it though, not the risks or the potentials or the consequences.

The decision and action had been made in the moment between the two sounds of a heartbeat, no more than a wish breathed between them. Then they had both been swept up in the rip tide of the Force, torn midichlorian from mitochondria, two souls and one frail human body.

There had been no thought, not until it was long done, and by that time she was on board the other ship, coming to the realisation she was shivering. Shivering meant that she was plied with his favourite hot drink – _they had spoken about hot chocolate, during one of their brief infinities_ – and wrapped in rough shipboard emergency blankets that rasped against her sensitive skin – _skin, she had skin, all of her was contained and wrapped, defined and delineated, a heart beating in her chest and ears, lungs that burned and hung leadenly when her mind was so filled with something else that no stimulus caused breath to inflate them_.

Her world was so bright and so loud and so entirely uncontrollable that she squeezed her eyes – _and they were human eyes, limited in wavelength, in range and depth of focus. She would never again see the legion and yet not overwhelming or overlapping images from every one of the thousands of cameras and sensors inside her hull, or trace the patterns of the radioactive particles as they drifted on the solar winds_ – opening them only as he took her hand.

His sky-blue eyes were overcast with worry. They had been so sun bright before, all those times, when he had walked her decks and stood within her very centre. Even when she had opened her own in the escape pod to find him standing over her. When he whispered a name-- an impossible delusion of a name since he already recognised the face and form – and she had answered to it they’d been as brilliant as an unshielded nova. He had hesitated then, still partially sure that he was dreaming, his ungloved hand reaching out to take hers. Their contact had illuminated him entirely, and she had basked in his joy, bruised in both body and spirit.

Now, he had to be feeling her realisation, her mixed awe and fear of what she had done through the Force. What she had done, what she and Cray had intended, must have reverberated through the Force like the percussive wave of a fusion detonation. Little wonder that she felt sundered from it, a quiet and stillness after the passing of the blast wind, the metaphorical eardrums of those special senses ruptured.

Perhaps that was why he looked so worried. Callista slipped one hand out from beneath her layers of blanket, intending to reach in reassurance. The hand, no, it was her hand, if not the hands that 30-years-dusty memories insisted upon – those had wider palms, short square nails, scars with different stories – stopped halfway. She turned it about, making and opening a fist, copper-lacquered fingertips unfolding like petals. Her nails had never been coloured.

Hesitantly, his hand – this time the one in the black leather glove – came out to meet hers. His fingers caressed the taut skin over her knuckles, spiralled over the back of her hand, a Pygmalion meeting marble made flesh, hardly daring to believe that such a thing was possible. They had embraced before, entwined, deep in the core of the computer suite that had been both body and home for her on the _Eye of Palpatine_. They had known each other mind and soul then, and she had revelled in it.

But now, his touch evoked only the sensations that her touching one hand to the other in a similar manner would. She shuddered at the loss, and his eyes crinkled as he thought he brought her pleasure. Surely, and the thoughts cycled through her head, looped in faulty program chains that folded recursively in on themselves, _it is just a different form of sensory overload. That I can feel all this – gravity’s actions on each muscle and joint, the textures and weights over and below me, the slowness of each thought and movement – if I felt it all in full detail it would be too much, so his touch is blunted. All my senses are. The Force is protecting me, even from itself. What would it feel like to touch the Force again in this form, to dive into it as I dove into the Chad oceans, to channel it through me, to swim like a fish through it, distinct and myself?_

“Luke.” Even the physical forming of words was novel and distracting. She worked her mouth, clenching her teeth, lips pursing, tasting the last smudges of waxy colour caught in the fine wrinkles on her lips. He smiled at her, and for a moment he looked as young as his documented age. She was abruptly distracted by memories of another Skywalker, a similar age, and used as hard by their cohort’s war. Surely…but now was not the time to ask. She had always been good at mining data from systems, and there was a whole generation’s worth of information to learn.

That enticing vision distracted her enough that he had to clear his throat, leaning forward encouragingly in his seat. “It’s so good, that you’re… here.”

He had avoided the inescapable awkwardness more adroitly than she would have expected, glossing over exactly what state she existed in. It seemed at odds with the picture he had painted her in their whispered conversations –the tow-headed farm boy who’d been used like a hammer by the Force, to rescue a princess and save the galaxy. It matched more the face canted towards her in inquiry, scarred, newer harsh lines of pain and fatigue, and the bearing of one whose wisdom came from the honourable path of horrible mistakes. Current tension changed the line of his shoulders, and his eyes met hers with laser focus. “How did you do it?” He frowned, tone apologetic. “I know, and I promise I’ll wait for a detailed explanation, but I need the basics now.” The apology was gone, only resolution remaining in his posture. “Callista, the only historical accounts, the only time I’ve seen that…feat… attempted, it was Darth Sidious – Emperor Palpatine that was – trying to possess my infant nephew. I never sensed any malice in you on the Eye, and there’s no marked tang of the Dark Side about you now. How did you do it?”

 _In translation, does he have to kill me now, for the good of the galaxy?_ She reached for the Force, seeking confirmation of his intent and validation of her own good standing. Nothing. The mental image of the Force she had carried since childhood, of an ocean surging with life, was elusive. Her mind insisted on dry baked earth, kelp rotting under sun, tsaelke bones bleached and broken. Slow shuddering breaths kept her from tears of anxiety. “I’ve always had an aptitude with computers. It wasn’t the first time I’d put my consciousness into a computer, just the only time I’d not had a body left to go back to.” _Each coherent light beam that struck her had hurt more than the previous, as though it was an allergy that could be sensitised. The pain tore at her, freezing at its contact point and searing hot in the tissue around it. With each hit, her concentration ebbed so that more got past her defences. If a soul could sob, hers had been as it fled the broken, charred and bleeding body, and from the sanctuary of the gunnery computer, watched herself take her last few agonised stuttering breaths._

He nodded, and it seemed curt enough to sting a little. “That technique I know. It was the original one that Cray modified to, well tried to, put Nichos’ consciousness into the droid brain.” She heard his voice soften with sympathy and grief for his two lost students. “But to transfer a person’s essence to another’s body, to subsume them, how could that be other than a tool of the Sith?” A hint of suspicion in his tone. She imagined his presence in the Force tinged with it, just as it had been when she had told him stories of her master and training cadre, of Djin Altis’ maverick methods and the freedoms he had given his students.

Anger flared in her, and for a second, like an engine almost sparking into life, she could feel his emotions in the Force. Not so much suspicion, as iron determination to test her, be certain before…. The Force abandoned her before she could take full measure of his motive.

“Cray wanted to stay with Nichos.” She repeated, still irritated. This part she had told him soon after leaving the escape pod. “She wanted to go with him so badly, that I think she would have followed him into the Force whatever I did. We never asked the questions, but she was willing, and so was the Force.”

_She still didn’t remember how she had stumbled to the escape pod, if she had ejected it or Cray, didn’t really know what had happened until she had opened her eyes to find him standing over her, calling her by her own name, but looking down to see Cray’s coveralls and tall slim body. She had begun shivering when she had had a moment to realise what could have happened. How fine the margin had been, how complete the risk. She had woken behind Cray’s eyes, woken entire, woken alone without either a whisper or the complete personality of the desperately despairing woman to share the solo quarters of Cray’s skull._

“What did it feel like?” He probed, and she guessed he reached out through the Force, as his expression became slightly remote. “Like falling from a liquid oxygen sensory deprivation tank into an empty room. There’s nothing wrong with you, but as long as you have a mix of gas and liquid in your lungs, you’re convinced you’re dying and there’s no peaceful end in sight.” The cold had crept back into her bones. _Was Cray sensitive to the cold? Will I ever feel warm again?_ “I wouldn’t recommend it to my worst enemy.” She aimed for the dry humour that had characterised their interactions on the _Eye_. Even if she had wanted to, without the Force it was never going to happen.

It seemed to work. Or maybe the Force had been whispering in his ear while she spoke, because his relaxation was almost complete. The bright smile returned. “I’m glad that you were able to come back to us.” He seemed boy-like suddenly, giddy. “All the lore, the knowledge of the Jedi Order, the things you’ll be able to teach us! A Jedi who passed the trials. There’s so much that we’ve lost. I had Obi Wan and Yoda to guide me for so little time. Everything we have is either their teachings or what I found on my own. But you, you’ll know how to teach younglings!” He had grabbed both of her hands and was gripping them fiercely, and she imagined he was ablaze with joy in the Force. “Come with me?” It was a question, not begged, but pleaded. “Help me avoid the mistakes that the Order made? I make plenty of my own.”

She didn’t know. She remembered, in one of their stolen peaceful moments, connected soul to soul, teasing him with her “knowledge”, and telling him only that the Universe had a sense of humour. It had been a place out of both their times, an elysian dream. Easy to fantasise a love across time and space when those factors were impossible to breech. _Be careful what you wish for_ , she thought, and the bitterness stung even her. _Because what do you do if you get it?_

 _And what do you lose to get it? I am one with the Force….I WAS one with the Force, but what if no longer?_ She stood abruptly, almost tripping over the blanket as she paced. She had loved him in that liminal space. Reality was another world entirely. Was it irony to have legs and know nowhere to run to? _He doesn’t know. I can’t let him know. He met a Jedi out of her time on the Eye, who had sacrificed lover and life for a cause. And now his dream is real. I can help him rebuild the Order. He never needs to know._

She smiled at him, stopping next to his chair. “Certainly, Jedi Skywalker. Show me the future.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story didn't go where I intended it. I wanted to unpack a little more how it felt for Callista to change from computer to human body, what that process was like, how it happened. But instead, I discovered that she actually went on some missions with Anakin and Asoka during the Clone Wars - see Wild Space by Karen Traviss. So I wondered, what would happen if instead she wasn't IN LOVE WITH LUKE AND DESTINED FOR EACH OTHER, but rather had a brief intimacy during a period of sharing the same space and goals on the Eye of Palpatine. But now she's stuck in their world, without the Force, and possibly about to find out that this is the son of the Skywalker she knew. And he doesn't know she can't touch the force. 
> 
> I hope there's a thread in here worth pursuing. I'd also be interested in a Callista who did go Dark Side so that she could have the Force. What if she was a Sith all along, and that's why she had that ability. hmmm.
> 
> I feel it could be better- written during breaks over three consecutive night shifts because I have no time management skills. I am here to learn them through the honourable path of horrible mistakes.


End file.
